Here it is, after two years...I knew I'd come back one day.

It's been two years almost since I blogged, but an old college friend, a sister, and a grandma have encouraged me to get back at it.  I loved blogging back in the day, and it makes me remember how cute my kids are :-)

Today is Mother's Day.  I'm so grateful for a wonderful mom and grandmothers.  I'm grateful for inspiring girlfriends and sisters, of whom I learn from.  I hope to be the type of mom they continually teach me to be.  I love them.

We recently had a baby girl, the first girl...she's our princess.  Kalen loves her and looks at her often from afar...with 'wondering awe' sometimes.  I see the love he has for her, and he talks about his love for her, but he's not one that will consistently smother her, like Brady.  Brady is in her face always.  I have a great cell phone picture of him trying to kiss her --she's screaming.  Brady is full of love and truly loves this new little girl in our family.  Trace told me last week that Addison is not pretty.  I said, "What?" sort of shocked because we are obviously always talking about how pretty she is.  He repeated, matter-of-factly, "She's not pretty.  You are though, mom."  (He really said that, I didn't edit that part into the story).  Then he added after seeing my somewhat shocked face, "She's almost pretty..."  I guess he thought that would make it better.  I laughed though...he did tell me the day before that girls are supposed to have long hair and that Addison looked like a boy because she doesn't have much hair.  We decided it's okay; I'm sure she'll be pretty in his eyes when she grows more hair.

When we found out we were pregnant, it was a surprise...we weren't sure what to think.  The first couple of months went by in a blur as we realized more and more everyday that we would be staring over...with everything, and doing it all again.  That's a really weird feeling.  I think that when you think you are done, you let things go-you forget so much.  Daily we kept remembering things that we had forgotten and it was overwhelming.

Then, on a wonderful day in November, with all three boys watching the ultrasound, we were informed a baby girl would be joining us.  Kalen was so happy.  He's been planning on having a sister since we found out we were pregnant with Brady.  He told me when Trace was born that we were still supposed to have a sister, and that God wanted us to have four kids, but I thought it was just him talking nonsense, like 3 year olds do.  Now I know though that Addison was supposed to come, and just maybe, when Kalen was very young, he knew it too.

Brady was happy when we found out too.  He said she could sleep in his room.  I told him she may not want a boy room and besides, where would she sleep, there were three boys already in that room.  He replied, "she can sleep in the closet."  What a sweet brother (keeping in mind their closet is not a large closet by any means).

Trace is also great with her...there was that one time when she was 5 days old and I walked into the living room to see him carrying Addison under his arm like a sack of potatoes...her poor newborn head just dangling there.  First instinct is to holler, but you don't do that when you see a 3 yr old "secretly" carrying his baby sister... I ran across the room and "helped" him as I asked him what he was doing and reminded him that we don't carry our baby sister yet.  He was just moving her from one couch to the other...so he could hold her and still see the TV okay.  Totally makes sense, right?

Okay, so there's my first new post.  I have to get all my pictures in order, so I can post them in my blogs again...sorry for no pics yet.  No one other than those in Colorado know what Addison looks like...I feel bad, but I'll get the pics on here.  And update the boys pics too...Promise   :-)

It's aliiiiiiiive!!!

So, when Kalen was almost two, grandpa Tom bought him this battery operated, electric John Deere truck. I always wanted a cool electric car growing up, but did he ever get one for his daughter? Nope. Alas, I had a baby, almost two years old, and another one one the way and here before me was this electric truck that my baby couldn't even drive yet!

That was over three years ago. Since then, the boys have had so much fun with this car. When we lived in Florida, neighbors throughout the neighborhood knew us from our daily "drives" through the neighborhood, and they would wave and smile as the boys drove past. Right before we moved, the truck died. We tried a couple of things, but we thought it was D-E-A-D. It had been so much fun, we couldn't quite give up hope, and we loaded it (although dead) into our moving truck as we headed to Colorado. When we got to Colorado, it set under the gazebo in our backyard, still dead, and Trace (who doesn't even remember it ever alive) would "pretend" to drive in it all the time. It never moved...until one day last week. The boys were "pretending" to drive in it, and it lunged forward for a half a second--almost hitting Brian who was under the gazebo, grilling dinner. It shocked everyone, but got Brian thinking, and a few days later--here we are!! Check out the fun pictures. Brian messed with some wires and it started working again! It's Aliiiiiiiiiive!!!! The boys LOVE IT!




On another note, I haven't posted in a while, and we have had so much fun this summer. Just today we went to a Kids Festival the city of Aurora puts on annually for kids (where everything is free), and it seems that we are always doing something. I LOVE how many fun, and inexpensive things there are to do out here in Colorado! It's so family oriented.

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For the fourth of July we went with grandparents and cousins (Jared, Dallin, Shane, and Liam) to Steamboat Springs and camped out the entire weekend. We also saw the most amazing fireworks show and a great July 4th parade! The kids really enjoyed it.

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For Memorial Day we visited some best buds--Megan, Oliver, Evan, and Ryan, in Provo, UT. I don't have any good pictures really (I was planning on taking a lot more than I actually took), but it made us realize how much we miss them and how much we wish they were closer. At one point, we played in the "Tingey Hall" yard on the grass hill and the boys just had a blast rolling down that big hill. Kalen thought it was pretty cool because that house was where we lived when he was born. Here are some pictures Brian took in the grass in front of Tingey Hall. Good memories.

I love these pics because I don't have too many of me and the boys--

normally I'm the one taking the pictures!

First family spring outing in Colorado

Brian decided we should go on a family camp out Friday night. It was sort of last minute, but we were so excited to make smores and sleep in tents! As we pulled up to a campsite, we found out that it and the other three camps in the area were sold out. Because we wanted to go to "Tiny Town" the next day, and because it was getting late, we didn't want to go very far from where we were. We decided to find a place in the camp to build a fire, roast marshmellows and make s'mores, and then we would just find a hotel for the night.

We soon discovered we couldn't find a fire pit to build a fire, so Brian built us a beautiful S'more roasting fire on a grill at a picnic part of the park. It was all about improvising--and we loved "roughing it" in the hotel (after we found one--the first two we went to were sold out as well...you would have thought it was a holiday weekend or something) :-)

Here's Kalen and daddy displaying our fire on a grill

And here's Trace and mommy sharing a s'more

And, I probably don't need to explain this one--it's Brady.

The next day we went to "Tiny Town," an adorable and fun tourist spot. They have a lot of small and playhouse sized houses, composing a town, and they are best known for their miniature train rides. We had soooo much fun!

Here are the boys with the conductors in front of the steam train.

This is Trace and Brady in front of the town's church with stained glass windows.

And Kalen in the lighthouse

All my boys in the Opera House

And Brady said his favorite part was the "jail"

Just some more fun pics--it was soooo windy...my hair doesn't

normally always look like that, I promise.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Colorado--there is so much for families to do! I can't wait to discover it all this summer.

It's mothers day today--Happy Mother's Day to all of you out there! As I sat reflecting on being a mom today I thought of each of my babies and what I love so much about them right now.

I love how big Trace is getting...he's talking so much now...quite early in comparison to his brothers, at only 19 months.

He also LOVES reading books--and he enjoys falling to sleep in his crib reading books each night--it's so cute when I say goodnight, hand him a book, and he plops down in his bed, pulls his blanket up over his lap, and opens the book. Each night, he passes out without a fuss, sometime during his book. I love it!

Brady is getting so smart as well. He is still hard to understand sometimes, but he's trying hard to work on his words--the hard ones are the ones that start with "tr" or "dr." What's amazing though is that he LOVES to cook and create in the kitchen, like his daddy. For those of you who read my last post, this is what I was talking about Brady did that I wanted to post about: I walked into the kitchen and saw this sight:

I said very calmly, after a deep breath, "Brady...what are you doing?" To which he replied, "I'm making A LOT of chocolate milk!" He had gotten the entire gallon of milk out of the fridge (luckily it was only half full) and squeezed half the chocolate syrup into it. He was so proud of himself, and didn't even make a mess until I distracted him. What 3 year old figures out he can do that with the entire gallon???

And Kalen is so loving with his little brothers. He really watches over them, and lets them "help" him in everything he does. He rarely minds their company, and he loves teaching them. I couldn't have asked for a better older brother for my other boys. We went bowling as a family the other night, and although Trace couldn't play, Kalen let Trace "help" roll the ball down each time. It was adorable.

And this is a regular for Kalen as well--and part of the reason I'm sure Trace is talking so much right now--Kalen loves sitting and practicing words and "reading" with Trace.

I love them all so much, and I am so grateful for the love and joy the bring to me in my life. Each beautiful little guy...they're just perfect, for me.

Catch up time--and Easter Eggs!

Well, here I am...thanks much to Emily...whose "Come baaaack" message was always in the back of my mind. I feel so bad having not updated my blog since Christmas. Just a quick update, though, and you will totally understand.

Since we moved to CO, I've been working full-time at Blue Cross and Blue Shield, doing something I love. I am also the Relief Society secretary in my ward, so that keeps me busy as well, sending out weekly emails and updating our Notebooks weekly. On top of that and being a mom (which is my MOST favorite part of my life), I am also pursuing my Masters Degree--but doing it online, so I can do it when the boys are asleep. Even though it's online, I'm going full-time, and it's pretty exciting--I'm getting my Masters in Psychology with an emphasis in Career Counseling and Coaching.

And, if that wasn't enough, Kalen is playing soccer, so every Tuesday and Friday night we have soccer games and practice. We also participate in a babysitting/date night exchange every Friday night (after soccer) and we have successfully kept our goal of going to the Temple at least once each month. So, if you were wondering what happened to me, let's just say, I've been busy. BUT, I missed blogging, so I will try to keep it up some more.

I've posted some updated pics of the boys.

Trace is now 18 months old--yay for nursery at church!

Brady turned 3 in March!!

And Kalen is the BIG 5!!

So, something fun we recently did was die Easter Eggs--but this year, we "Tie-died" them, literally--we died them with Ties!! The pics below are pictures of the finished products, and they are on top of the pieces of ties we used to die them--IT WAS SO EASY, and it was fun seeing how each tie turned out as we unwrapped it...

We had a lot more, but didn't want to bore you with all the egg pics--but here are the ties we used, pre-cutting them for the eggs!

Brady did the funniest thing tonight, he's getting so smart...stay tuned for my next post.

New Guinea anyone?

So, this year Santa brought my boys two Guinea Pigs! That's right--despite Brian's "No rodents" rule, we are now the proud parents of a boy and a girl guinea pig (don't worry, the boy is fixed). Here are some pictures from Christmas morning. The boys were excited, and we were surprised at how big Guinea Pigs really are! They're like little rabbits, and they're great with the boys as you will soon see:

Brady with his Guinea Pig named "Hamster"

(he named him himself)

Kalen with "Leafy" who evidently loves to eat
leaves (Kalen named her)

Here's Kalen posing with Leafy the next day--like I mentioned,

they let the boys handle them in all kinds of ways.

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Here's another one with Hamster and Brady--I like this one

because it really shows Brady's excitement.

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And to not forget about Trace, tonight he was feeding

Hamster and when I turned my back...

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He stole the carrot!

We hope you all had a fun-filled and loving holiday.

We're grateful for each of you in so many ways.

It's not candy mom!

I feel so bad, I haven't updated my blog in a MONTH!! But here it is, and I hope to get back into the swing of things. What can I say, I'm a busy busy lady right now.

So, this past week we had a FUN family activity with Grandma and Grandpa Graham and Uncle Chris. We each were able to make our own Gingerbread House and show off our individual creativity. If you want, you can vote for your favorite in the comment section! (ps--I didn't make one--I helped my boys of course)!

Here's Kalen's lil' house--sooo cute. You'll notice others with snowmen on the sides, but Kalen was the original to place a snowman outside his gingerbread house. He also did all the "gluing" of decoration all by himself!

Brady was so proud when he was done. You'll notice that behind the snowman on the right there are three little gingerbread boys. Brady was adamant that one of the lil' boys have red hair, thus the licorice stick on top of the head of the boy farthest to the right

:-)

Here's daddy's beautiful masterpiece. I love how Brian always takes such pride and joy in his edible creations, this Gingerbread House being no different. Brian was also the one to create the icing everyone used, which was perfect for decorating. It dried fast!

Uncle Chris had high hopes to make a giant house, but we ran out of crackers before he got to his roof. He had fun decorating none-the-less.

Grandma stole ALL the mini-marshmallows!! You'll notice no one else has any on their houses...

And last, but not least, Grandpa took great care cutting all of crackers into pieces to create a log cabin Gingerbread house. It was pretty creative, I think, although all that cutting made him pretty stingy with his knife. By the end, we knew not to ask him to borrow it :-)

AND A FUNNY FUNNY STORY:
So, throughout all of this, the boys were eating lots and lots of candy. About half-way through, I made a firm rule that they were not allowed to eat any more candy---they had had enough, we all had. After Brady got done with his house, and while I was helping Kalen, I noticed Brady trying to get my attention. "It's not candy mom...MOM, look, it's not candy." Without thinking about the earlier rule, I said, "You're right buddy, it's not candy, it's a marshmallow." At that announcement, Brady grinned and promptly shoved a whole large marshmallow into his little 2 yr old mouth! (I grabbed the camera)